Start with scary headline in British newspaper:

Cannabis ‘can cause psychosis in healthy people’

Add definitive subtitle hammering home the legitimacy of the scary headline:

A potent form of cannabis can cause healthy people to develop psychotic illnesses, a new British study has proved.

Proved, you hear?  Proved!  All right, now deliver the lede that tells us marijuana smokers how we’re destined for the mental ward:

The results appear to confirm a link between psychosis and skunk cannabis, which now accounts for 80 per cent of street seizures of the drug.

Add some related bullet points to raise the reefer madness levels to eleven:

• Skunk smokers 18 times more likely to be psychotic
• One spliff can mean lifelong mental illness
• Mental health charity calls for cannabis study

Don’t worry, by this time few people will notice this little devil in the details:

Scientists at the Institute of Psychiatry in King’s College London made the discovery after running tests on 22 healthy men, aged in their late 20s.  They injected them with THC – a major component of skunk cannabis which has been blamed for increasing psychosis among heavy users.

Whoa, hold on!  You injected people with straight THC and you’re using that to prove cannabis use can cause psychosis in healthy people?!?  I could have saved you the research.  Straight THC is highly psychoactive and without other cannabinoids, terpenes, and flavinoids found in herbal cannabis, delta-9-tetrahydrocannibinol metabolizes in the blood into another form of THC that is even more psychoactive!

Oddly enough, while the British worry about this deadly psychotic skunk weed that has risen to (gasp!) 14% THC, their Dutch neighbors won’t even approve of medical marijuana unless it is between 13%-18% THC.  Here in America, we approve of a 100% THC, no-other-cannabinoid pill called dronabinol (Marinol) which I will tell you from experience will cause a more profound negative psychological reaction than even the finest 60% THC hash I’ve encountered.

Even the researchers cautioned against making the “Skunk causes psychosis” claim, which, of course, the UK media is required to bury around paragraph eleven:

Dr Morrison said the findings offered “additional evidence that can elicit temporary psychotic-like effects in some people”, but stopped short of suggesting they proved a direct link between psychosis and THC.

He said: “Much more research is needed to clarify if skunk is actually more harmful than traditional cannabis.” More work needed to be carried out on the beneficial effects of CBD in balancing the damaging results of THC.

British reefer madness – just like American reefer madness, except bobbies bust into your flat to arrest you for skunk cannabis, instead of cops busting into your apartment to arrest you for kind marijuana.

Watch the UK’s latest ‘Talk to Frank’ cannabis ad, where “Simon” is just a typical young male Briton about to light up a joint.  He’s happy, because he knows his “Giggles”, “Munchies”, “Happy”, “Dr. Chill”, and “Talkative” personalities will emerge from smoking the reefer.  But he really doesn’t want to invite in “Memory Loss”, “Panic Attacks”, “Paranoia, “Pukey”, and “Lazy”.  This ad also reminds the viewer that cannabis has been recently upgraded to a scary Class B drug.

I’m waiting for the UK ad with “Pip”, the young male Briton about to quaff a Guiness Stout.  Bring on “Happy”, “Outgoing”, “Obnoxious”, “Weepy”, “Confrontational”, “Violent”, “Pukey”, “Mr. Auto Crash”, “Addicted”, “Unconscious”, and “Cirrhosis”.

The reclassification of cannabis as a Class B drug has come into effect in England and Wales amid complaints the new laws are “illogical”.

Plans to introduce a “three strikes” system for cannabis possession start with a warning, then an £80 spot fine for a second offence. Scotland and Northern Ireland have opted out of this penalties arrangement for England and Wales, retaining the former system for class B drugs.

Only when a third offence is committed, will the person be liable to arrest and prosecution.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith decided to reclassify cannabis despite an Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs’ review – commissioned by Gordon Brown – saying it should remain Class C.

Ms Smith said stronger “skunk” varieties account for 80% of the cannabis seized on the streets, and that the drug is nearly three times stronger than in 1995.

The advisory council’s report, Cannabis: Classification and Public Health, described the drug as a “significant public health issue”.

But it said it should still remain a Class C drug, saying the risks were not as serious as those of Class B substances such as amphetamines and barbiturates.

Britain and America are so much alike when it comes to marijuana policy.  Both have commissioned independent reviews of cannabis policy, both have had these reviews recommend decriminalization, both have ignored the scientists and the pollsters and the doctors and the people in continuing to punish people for their responsible use of cannabis.

PENALTIES FOR DRUG DEALING AND POSSESSION

Drug class	Type of drug	Possession	Dealing
Class A	Ecstasy, LSD, heroin, cocaine, crack, magic mushrooms, amphetamines (if prepared for injection).	Up to seven years in prison or an unlimited fine or both.	Up to life in prison or an unlimited fine or both.
Class B	Cannabis, amphetamines, Methylphenidate (Ritalin), Pholcodine.	Up to five years in prison or an unlimited fine or both.	Up to 14 years in prison or an unlimited fine or both.
Class C	Tranquilisers, some painkillers, Gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB), Ketamine.	Up to two years in prison or an unlimited fine or both.	Up to 14 years in prison or an unlimited fine or both

Source: Home Offfice

via BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Cannabis law change ‘illogical’.

BBC NEWS | Politics | Peers to vote on cannabis rethink
Peers are being urged to overturn the government’s plan to upgrade cannabis from a class C to a Class B drug.

The change is due to come into force in January, reversing Tony Blair’s 2004 downgrading, and raising a maximum jail sentence for possession to five years.

This is despite the Council on the Misuse of Drugs recommendation that cannabis should remain a class C drug.

The government’s reclassification order was made in October but is not due to come into force until 26 January next year.

A letter to the Guardian newspaper, signed by former government chief scientific advisers David King and Lord Robert May, says the drugs classification system must be “credible” and that changing it again would give an “ambiguous message”.

“Cannabis use has fallen in recent years, especially following its downgrading to class C in 2004, and it is obviously unwise to risk reversing that trend.”

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said in June that the drug should return to class B because of “uncertainty” over its impact on mental health.

This would lift the maximum prison sentence for possession from two years to five years.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith needs to review the latest research on cannabis and mental health.  Researchers in Denmark have found no validity to the idea of “cannabis-induced psychosis” and concluded that schizophrenics whose bad reactions to pot preceded their mental illness “would have developed schizophrenia whether or not they used cannabis.”

Since the UK downgraded cannabis from Class B to Class C, they’ve seen cannabis use drop to the lowest levels in a decade.  So, naturally, in the face of such success, they’ve decided to go back to Class B.

Much of this change can be traced to the UK media hyping the threat of “skunk”.  Here in America, they’ll call it “bud” or “Pot 2.0″, but the argument is the same: this new super-pot is nothing like what you smoked at Woodstock – it’s addictive and will ruin your kids’ lives!  It’s not true, of course.  There has always been super-potent pot and potency is irrelevant; if it’s more potent, you just smoke less of it.  Increased potency does not change the effect of the cannabis – you still get high – but it just takes less smoking to get there, which is a good thing if you don’t like smoky lungs.

Wouldn’t it be nice if drug policy was based on science and medical observation instead of tabloid headlines and ignorant politicians?

Looks like the UK reefer madness has now spread to Canada – this is an editorial from Canada’s National Post:

Barbara Kay on the new marijuana: Not your mother’s reefer – Full Comment
The words “intoxicate the brain” bring to mind the Post’s 2007 editorial on marijuana, enunciated in response to evidence that Canada’s marijuana consumption was the highest in the industrialized world: “What is really remarkable about Canada’s status as a cannabis capital is that if you were to set out looking for reasons to worry about it … you would have an awfully hard time finding them. Legalizing pot makes sense.”

What was the editorial board smoking when these words were written? In fact, one would not “have an awfully hard time” finding reasons to worry if one were actually open to finding them.

In 1997, the liberal U.K. newspaper The Independent launched a campaign to decriminalize marijuana. …Since then, “skunk,” as Britons call the hybrid form of cannabis in current usage, has offered users a 25-fold increase in tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabis’s psychoactive ingredient. The mental and physical effects of this chemical change have been dramatic.

In March, 2007, The Lancet, Britain’s leading medical journal, declared cannabis to be more dangerous and addictive than LSD and Ecstasy. About the same time, Professor Colin Blakemore, chief of the Medical Research Council (and in 1997, the moral authority behind The Independent’s liberalization campaign) unequivocally reversed his cannabis-friendliness: “The link between cannabis and psychosis is quite clear now; it wasn’t 10 years ago.”

As a result, The Independent last year offered its readership a fulsome apology: “If only we had known then what we can reveal today…”

Psychiatry professor Robin Murray of London’s Institute of Psychiatry estimates that cannabis usage is causally linked to a full 10% of the U. K.’s 250,000 bipolar patients.

Indeed, just this past February, the European Respiratory Journal reported on a New Zealand study indicating that long term cannabis use increases the annual risk of lung cancer in young adults by 8% for every year of use.

In 1970, pot contained 1% THC. Bud contains 20% THC. Imagine a glass of wine or beer with a similarly proportioned alcohol content and consider the “rush” it would provide.

Two weeks ago, the Home Office in the U.K. announced: “Cannabis will be reclassified as a Class B drug, sending a strong message that the drug is harmful.”

The verdict on the new marijuana is in, and it’s “guilty.” I would therefore respectfully ask the Post to reconsider its editorial stance on the legalization of “pot,” clearly a superannuated description of cannabis today, and in future commentary on this issue, so critical to our youth’s health, exercise a little more intellectual — ahem — sobriety.

Intellectual sobriety? How about instead, a few facts, please:

1) “Skunk” is 25x more powerful? Where can I find some? The 1% THC 1970s pot cited would be called unsmokable “industrial hemp” and give you more a headache than a high. I’d assume Canada’s pot potency is similar to what has been measured in the US, from an average of 3% THC in 1985 to 8% THC in 2005.

This “not your father’s pot” myth is created by comparing the pot tested years later from the hot, dry evidence lockers where it had been stored since the 70s and the THC has degraded to the hemp-level 1% THC, vs. the highest grade (and rare) hash and sensimillia that can range from 15%-30% THC. It’s a bit like saying alcohol is so much more dangerous today because Dad drank 3.2 beer in the 70s and today there is Bacardi 151 rum!

2) Cannabis more dangerous than LSD and ecstasy? LSD, the most potent psychedelic known to man and ecstasy, a stimulant that has led to numerous deaths, more dangerous than the herb that has killed zero people in history? Really?

3) The link between cannabis and psychosis is fabricated by UK scaremongers. Studies purporting this link have been extremely flawed, such as not controlling for poly-drug use and failing to prove a causal link between cannabis and psychosis (i.e., many people already have psychosis and use cannabis to self-medicate). The latest research, published in the journal Human Psychopharmacology, finds very minimal risk psychologically from cannabis use.

4) Cannabis and bipolarity (or schizophrenia, for that matter) is another one of these specious correlative-but-not-causal links. If, indeed, cannabis causes these massive harms, where are the bodies? As potency has risen, why has there been no associated rise in the incidence of schizophrenia, which seems to always hover at below 2% of the population? As cannabis use rates have risen and fallen, why haven’t rates of bipolar disorder risen and fallen?

5) Lung cancer (and head and neck cancers) is not a risk of even heavy cannabis smoking, as shown by Dr. Donald Tashkin at the UCLA Medical Center.

6) Imagining the rush from beer or wine is not comparable. Alcohol intake requires 30-45 minutes of digestion before one feels the effects. Thus, someone unknowingly consuming a more potent alcohol faces the risk of becoming drunker than intended.

But with inhaled cannabis, the effects are known within seconds. This means no matter how potent the marijuana, a person smokes it to get high, and upon reaching the high, the smoker usually stops. In this way, more potent marijuana may actually be healthier, as the user would inhale less harmful smoke.

It should also be mentioned that users can vaporize or eat cannabis, which removes all of the harmful effects of smoking.

Furthermore, when talking about how terrible more potent cannabis is, we should remember that Canada has approved for medical use Marinol and Sativex, both synthetic versions of THC that are 100% pure. (Strange that an easily-grown weed at 15% THC is “deadly skunk” but when the 100% THC is bar-coded for a profit, it’s a recognized medicine.)

7) “Long term cannabis use increases the annual risk of lung cancer in young adults by 8% for every year of use?”  So, then, after 12½ years of cannabis use, there’s a 100% chance of getting lung cancer?

The verdict on Ms. Kay’s “reporting” on cannabis is in, and it’s “guilty” of the same old reefer madness propaganda yellow journalists have foisted on an uninformed public since William Randolph Hearst in the 1930s:

“Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid specters. Hasheesh makes a murderer who kills for the love of killing out of the mildest mannered man who ever laughed at the idea that any habit could ever get him….” — William Randolph Hearst, 1936.

Cannabis goes back to Class B despite drug experts’ verdict – Times Online
Cannabis will be upgraded to a Class B drug next year even though the head of the Government’s advisory body says that the change is neither warranted nor likely to achieve the desired effect.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, announced the reversal yesterday of the Government’s earlier decision to downgrade the drug. But under18s caught with it will not be treated any more harshly, to avoid criminalising them.

Punishment for the over18s will increase from the existing “confiscate and warning” for a first offence to a possible penalty notice for disorder on a second offence followed by arrest and prosecution for a third offence.

Although the new jail term for possession rises from two to five years, it is unlikely that anyone will be imprisoned for simple possession of cannabis for personal use.

Reclassification will not take effect until early next year because Parliament has to approve the decision.

A report from the advisory council concluded that the health dangers from cannabis did not justify its inclusion in the higher category and that it should remain a Class C drug. Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, chairman of the council, said: “Changing the classification of cannabis is neither warranted nor will it achieve the desired effect.”

Ms Smith said that the Government was overruling the council because she was unwilling to “risk the future health of young people”. She told MPs: “Where there is a clear and serious problem, but doubt about the harm that will be caused, we must err on the side of caution and protect the public. I make no apology for that – I am not prepared to wait and see.”

The Home Secretary said she was concerned about the mental health effects of smoking super-strength skunk cannabis, which now accounts for 81 per cent of cannabis seized on the streets. There were also suggestions that young people were “binge smoking” to get the maximum high.

The reefer madness of Gordon Brown continues.  The public health and law enforcement experts on the prime minister’s advisory body voted 20-3 that cannabis should remain in the lowest classification of drugs – Class C – and that Britons should not be arrested for its possession.

But politicians love to look “tough on crime” and by treating cannabis use as a crime, they can score easy points in the political arena, despite the overwhelming evidence that cannabis use is not a serious social problem and what few problems it does present are best treated in a public health model, not a criminal justice one.

Jacqui Smith says we can’t afford to “wait and see”, yet since cannabis has been downgraded from Class B to Class C, we’ve found that cannabis use has gone down in the UK.  Furthermore, cannabis has been in widespread use since the 1960s – how much longer does Ms Smith need to wait and see?

This is driven in the UK by the tabloid headlines of the dreaded “skunk” cannabis, otherwise known by realists as “quality marijuana”.  They trumpet false stats like “skunk is 30 times more potent than regular cannabis”.  Since “skunk” tests out at about 12%-14% THC, then they must consider hemp rope to be “regular cannabis”.  Actually, “regular cannabis” tests out to 7%-10% THC, so maybe it is at most twice as potent.

However, as we all know, more potent cannabis does not equal more public danger.  Cannabis is non-toxic, so smoking more of the more potent varieties isn’t going to cause any more physical harm.  Cannabis is self-titrating, which means users smoke to get high, and if the cannabis is more potent, they just smoke less of it to get high.  Considering that inhaling the smoke of burning vegetable matter of any kind isn’t the nicest thing for your lungs, smoking less of it is probably a good thing.

We here at NORML call on all our friends in the United Kingdom to call your member of Parliament and tell them to vote no on the upgrade of cannabis from Class C to Class B.

Gordon Brown is facing a dilemma over whether to overrule his own panel of experts and increase the penalties for being caught in possession of cannabis.

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs is understood to have decided at a private meeting that it will not recommend tightening the law on the drug.

The decision presents a potential embarrassment for the Prime Minister, who earlier this week said that he regarded cannabis use as not just illegal but also unacceptable.

It is understood that 20 out of the panel’s 23 experts decided on Wednesday that there was not sufficient new scientific evidence to justify a change.

If Mr Brown decides to press ahead with reclassification, he will risk becoming only the second Prime Minister to over-rule the council, which is a statutory non-departmental public body dating from 1971.

The Government reclassified cannabis as a Class C substance – dropping the penalty for possession from five to two years in jail – in 2004.

Since then it has reviewed the decision twice, in 2005 and 2008.

Conservative leader David Cameron said: “There are all sorts of cannabis on the streets today. Skunk and super skunk are incredibly powerful and can lead to people having all sorts of mental health problems.”

The mental health charity Rethink, which gave evidence to the committee, said Mr Brown should heed the committee’s advice.

Paul Corry, a spokesman, said: “Gordon Brown should put aside his personal views on cannabis and accept the fact that it does not make sense to reclassify.

“Use of the drug has gone down since it was downgraded in 2004 and research by Rethink shows that only 3 per cent of users would consider stopping on the grounds of illegality.”

The committee is understood to have concluded there was no need re-classify after new research found no evidence that rising cannabis use in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s had led to increases in schizophrenia.

This is despite many reports pointing to a links between super-strength skunk cannabis, which accounts for 80 per cent of street cannabis, and mental illnesses such as schizoprenia and psychosis.

The prime minister and the conservatives are completely in the grips of reefer madness.  The media in the UK flood the airwaves and newsstands with scare stories of the dreaded “super skunk” causing violent psychosis and schizophrenia, stories that would make American 20th century prohibitionists Harry J. Anslinger and William Randolph Hearst proud.

The reason 20 of 23 of the experts on Brown’s committee on misuse of drugs recommend against upgrading cannabis to a higher class of dangerous drugs is because they pay attention to the science, not the lurid British tabloids that want to peddle reefer madness stories to sell copy and suck up to the conservative government.

Next Wednesday, I’ll discuss this story with Dr. Mitch Earleywine, who has all of the science on these reports of “super skunk” in the UK.  Meanwhile, if there are any tokin’ Tories, sinsemilla subjects, or bong-hittin Britons who want to weigh in on cannabis culture across the pond and the crazy reefer madness in the media,  please email me at stash ‘at’ norml.org.

The tactics are familiar. Anslinger took “cannabis” and “hemp”, which almost every early-20th Century American knew to be a common medication and a source of rope and canvas, and re-branded it “marijuana”. That way he and his buddy, William Randolph Hearst, could spread sensationalist lies about cannabis in Hearst’s newspapers, and the scary, Mexican-sounding word helped frighten people about weed in a way that scaremongering on “cannabis” and “hemp” would not.

But the British version of this, happening right now in the 21st Century, is to re-brand the popular herb as “skunk”, with the addition of the scaremongering “this ain’t your father’s pot” rhetoric (“‘skunk’ is fifty times more potent than the ganja of the 1960s!”). And this time, it’s not the Negroes coming to hurt whitey, but rather the patently false claim that ‘skunk’ triggers psychosis and schizophrenia.

Here is a typical article, from The Argus in the UK…

A mother driven insane by cannabis stabbed herself repeatedly through the chest with a carving knife after claiming she was spoken to by a dog.

Julie Cross told friends the animal was “trying to tell her something” before picking up the 5in blade and ramming it at least five times into her chest and abdomen.

An inquest was told the former receptionist, from Goring, used speed and cannabis on a daily basis and in the weeks running up to her death had slashed her wrists and smeared her blood across a crucifix and also hung a noose from her attic.

Cannabis and speed! Do ya think, perhaps, the speed had more to do with the psychosis? That’s a link that has substantial basis in research and plenty of anecdotal evidence that I’ll testify to as a former club musician who’s seen his share of tweekers.

And yet the headline is “Cannabis-smoking mum stabbed herself to death”.

Katie Leason, spokeswoman for mental health charity Rethink, said the case further proved that cannabis causes severe mental illness. “We don’t believe there is any doubt about it now. There is a proven link between the drug and psychosis,” said Ms Leason.

Hmm… a mental health charity asserting that use of the most popular illicit substance will create more clients for a mental health charity… interesting.

The hearing, at Worthing Town Hall, was told that Miss Cross, from Limbrick Lane, had drug-induced psychosis diagnosed in 2006.

It had led to her spending much of her last year in and out of the Mill View psychiatric hospital. The inquest heard that during what was described as a “very difficult life” Miss Cross had made repeated attempts on her own life, starting at the age of 14.

So, then, she’s diagnosed with drug-induced psychosis at age 39, yet she’s been actively suicidal since age 14. Yeah, it’s gotta be the cannabis, er, excuse me, the ‘skunk’ that did it, even though they didn’t have the ‘skunk’ back in 1981 when she first attempted suicide. (The article doesn’t mention whether she’s smoked cannabis since age 14, but I kinda doubt it.)